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Mega-Rich Americans Escape Plan --> to Upsidedown Land...........

Me here ---- Does this sound like the old movie - "On The Beach" - but in NZ instead of Australia?

Years of doomsday talk at Silicon Valley dinner parties has turned to action.

In recent months, two 150-ton survival bunkers journeyed by land and sea from a Texas warehouse to the shores of New Zealand, where they’re buried 11 feet underground.

Seven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have purchased bunkers from Rising S Co. and planted them in New Zealand in the past two years, said Gary Lynch, the manufacturer’s general manager. At the first sign of an apocalypse — nuclear war, a killer germ, a French Revolution-style uprising targeting the 1 percent* — the Californians plan to hop on a private jet and hunker down, he said.

(* there is a rising ground swell talking about a coup d'état here in the US if the midterm elections don't go 'right'. Under siege is the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. Watch your newspapers.)

“New Zealand is an enemy of no one,” Lynch said in an interview from his office in Murchison, Texas, southeast of Dallas. “It’s not a nuclear target. It’s not a target for war. It’s a place where people seek refuge.”

The remote island nation, clinging to the southern part of the globe 2,500 miles off Australia’s coast, has 4.8 million people and six times as many sheep. It has a reputation for natural beauty, easy networking, low-key politicians who bike to work, and rental prices half those of the San Francisco Bay Area. That makes it an increasingly popular destination not only for those fretting about impending dystopia, but for tech entrepreneurs seeking incubators for nurturing startups.

“It’s become one of the places for people in Silicon Valley, mostly because it’s not like Silicon Valley at all,” said Reggie Luedtke, an American biomedical engineer who’s moving to New Zealand in October for the Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship, a program created to lure tech innovators.

Luedtke, 37, said people in California have asked him if he’s relocating as part of a doomsday contingency plan, because “that’s what the country is known for.”

Such notoriety has made New Zealand’s isolation, once deemed an economic handicap, one of its biggest assets. The nation allows emigres to essentially buy residency through investor visas, and rich Americans have poured a fortune into the country, often by acquiring palatial estates.

Billionaire hedge-fund honcho Julian Robertson owns a lodge overlooking Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, the South Island’s luxury resort destination. Fidelity National Financial Inc. Chairman Bill Foley has a homestead in the Wairarapa region, north of Wellington, and Titanic director James Cameron bought a mansion nearby at Lake Pounui.
The Investor Plus Visa, which requires a minimum investment of NZD$10 million ($6.7 million) over three years, attracted 17 U.S. applicants in fiscal 2017, after President Donald Trump’s election. Previously, it averaged six applicants a year.

More than 10 Americans from the West Coast have bought multimillion-dollar properties in the Queenstown region in the past two years, said Mark Harris, managing director of the local Sotheby’s real estate office.

In August, partly in response to Americans gobbling up swaths of prime real estate, New Zealand’s government banned foreigners from buying homes, with the restrictions set to take effect in coming months.

Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, ignited an uproar when he was granted citizenship after spending just 12 days in the country, prompting allegations that New Zealand’s passport was for sale. Thiel, 50, owns a $13.8 million home on 477 acres (193 hectares) in the lakeside town of Wanaka, with views of snow-capped mountains, and purchased another property in Queenstown, outfitted with a safe room.

“If you’re the sort of person that says ‘I’m going to have an alternative plan when Armageddon strikes,’ then you would pick the farthest location and the safest environment — and that equals New Zealand if you Google it,” former Prime Minister John Key said in a phone interview.

“It’s known as the last bus stop on the planet before you hit Antarctica,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of people say to me that they would like to own a property in New Zealand if the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”

Me again ---------- there's a whole lot more to read and see pictures - but they won't paste in here no matter how I save them.

Re: Mega-Rich Americans Escape Plan --> to Upsidedown Land...........

Neville Shute's book "On the beach" would be a good read for those folk if they were thinking of a nuclear war! Points out the inevitable results of that sort of crisis. It is set in Melbourne in 1963. All to do with the winds gradually spreading South, bringing the muck down here.

Re: Mega-Rich Americans Escape Plan --> to Upsidedown Land...........

Yes its news here as well but it seems The Rising Sun Company is bull****ing about the numbers because you cant dig holes in NZ with out a consent or planning permission.No digger operator will work unless he has consent because he wears it. Ok you simpletons say it was done in secret but that does not work in NZ someone always flaps their gums at the pub. I am all for these dumb Yank preppers making a bolthole and stocking it because if the **** goes down I know where these bunkers are and they will be my supplies. All bunkers need some form of ventilation and I will gas or smoke them out and deal to them armed or not. So Yanks build your bunkers but tell me where they are I shouldn't have to search for them to throw you out of them if I need the supplies.

Re: Mega-Rich Americans Escape Plan --> to Upsidedown Land...........

Hey, youse guys..... I'm just reporting the news that came across my desk yesterday. Except for potential nuclear fallout from ICBMs from the guy with the lame-o bowl-cut hair style, Montana's only real military interest is some old Cold War missile silos..... we live in a naturally safe blast free zone.

Surrounded by mountains to the east and west........ whatever goes on in Seattle or San Francisco or even Lost Angeles won't affect us directly with radioactive flashburns.

So I have decided to rededicate the shipping containers that I buried in Paihia ... into subterranean movie theaters with free popcorn and Japanese Sapporo beer taps at each seat.

If you can actually find my theaters, that is. We will be showing It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on a continuously looping projector.

The scenes in which I appear will require viewers to rise and chug a swallow of beer every time I'm on screen. Seats will be electrified to motivate attendees to rise at the appropriate times.

Re: Mega-Rich Americans Escape Plan --> to Upsidedown Land...........

Interesting on how they see NZ
"its lax regulations"
"gained citizenship after spending only 12 days in the country"

if the stuff really did hit the fan, mega apocalypse of any sort, civilization will collapse. Back to the stone age for the few that survive
Those mega rich in the bunkers wont last long after they emerge , they wont have the skills to live off the land.
And they'll need to fight off hungry hoards trying to break in to get the food.